First and Last – Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger
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Most comics historians, in writing about Jackie Ormes, note her Torchy Brown comic strip for which she is justly famous. But Ormes’ biographer Nancy Goldstein notes that “it is Patty-Jo that the readers of the Courier whom I talked to seem to remember most vividly.”
Goldstein continues:
That a girl child expressed wisdom, exposed folly, and could say what was on many people’s minds and get away with it must have struck a chord with readers.
As for the member of the cartoon team (Goldstein again):
Ginger’s acceptability in a family newspaper in spite of her attention-getting poses was partly due to her chaste persona…desirable but never provocative, a charmer but not a seductress.
The panel first appeared September 1, 1945 in the Pittsburgh Courier.
World War II had ended with V-E Day in August, leaving it still a major topic.
The popular panel was soon being syndicated to other Black newspapers; running for 11 years.
Finally ending on September 22, 1956.
There doesn’t seem to be any real collection of Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger cartoons on the internet, but Goldstein’s book collects 88 (of 500+) panels with her commentary about the politics and fashions (Ginger and Patty-Jo both had extensive wardrobes) of the day running along side those cartoons.
Below: two of the 44 pages of Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger cartoons in the Jackie Ormes book.
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